--json or --yaml output cannot be isolated from logging output

Tools (like Website Evidence Collector BATCH) may rely on WEC outputting JSON (along the lines of inspection.json) to stdout -- and nothing but¹ that JSON payload. It's easier to pipe in just JSON than to pre-process the received data to remove logging noise around it.

Latest WEC uses winston/logger as means for console output; progress logging as well as JSON/YAML payload is output using logger.‹level_method›(), the latter at info level.²³ I understand all that output goes to stderr. Requested payload should go to stdout, though.⁴

The suggestion is, to use a simple console.log("%s", json_dump) or console.log("%s", yaml_dump) instead, respectively, to unconditionally output inspection payload when requested by using --json or --yaml flags.

(A second issue is addressed in the following patch: sometimes (not yet understood when) save‹FMT›ToFile() is called with an empty object prior to being called with an non-empty inspection data object. In composition that leads to invalid JSON ("{}\n{ "...": "..", ...}"). Hence the guard against empty objects being output in the patch below – treating the symptom rather than the problem.)

diff --git a/src/reporter/reporter.ts b/src/reporter/reporter.ts
index 8e292aa..4e97912 100644
--- a/src/reporter/reporter.ts
+++ b/src/reporter/reporter.ts
@@ -243,8 +243,8 @@ export class Reporter {
 
     this.saveFile(filename, json_dump);
 
-    if (this.options.printJsonToConsole) {
-      this.logger.info(json_dump);
+    if (this.options.printJsonToConsole && Object.keys(data).length > 0) {
+      console.log("%s", json_dump);
     }
   }
 
@@ -271,8 +271,8 @@ export class Reporter {
 
     this.saveFile(filename, yaml_dump);
 
-    if (this.options.printYamlToConsole) {
-      this.logger.info(yaml_dump);
+    if (this.options.printYamlToConsole && Object.keys(data).length > 0) {
+      console.log("%s", yaml_dump);
     }
   }

1. In case of no errors, at least. ↩

2. src/reporter/reporter.ts#L247 ↩

3. src/reporter/reporter.ts#L275 ↩

4. That plays well with deprecated --quiet switch as well as stderr redirection via 2> /dev/null as suggested by the help screen. ↩